Dollar General coming to Western Avenue

Thursday, June 5, 2025 - 20:05

The Enterprise — Melissa Hale-Spencer

Discount retailer Dollar General is coming to 1975 Western Ave., the site of the former Westlawn Lane bowling alley. 

GUILDERLAND — Discount retailer Dollar General is slated to open on the site of the former Westlawn Lane bowling alley. 

“Dollar General will be occupying one of the tenant spaces in the building,” Town Planner Kenneth Kovalchik told Enterprise by email. “In 2024 the ZBA approved a Special Use Permit to convert the building to a Local Shopping Center use.”

The town’s zoning board of appeals in August 2024 unanimously approved a special-use permit to allow the long-closed bowling alley to become a strip mall.

Project applicant David Zhang was before the Guilderland Planning Board at its March 2024 meeting with a proposal to reconfigure 1975 Western Ave. into a 15,000-square-foot multi-tenant strip shopping center with storefronts running along both Alvina Boulevard, a residential street, and Western Avenue, Guilderland’s major thoroughfare. 

The one-story brick building is on 1.5 acres, most of which is in a Local Business zone.

“An additional land use approval that may be necessary is for signs,” according to Kovalchick. “I do not believe any sign permit application has been submitted to the Building Department at this time.”

More Guilderland News

  • More senior housing approved for Carman Road

    The board at its March 4 meeting unanimously approved the project as well as a variance request from the town zoning code that would require the new structures to be set back 100 feet from the single-family lots on either side of the property. 

  • Guilderland ZBA denies building in reservoir tributary setback

    The issue the applicant ran into was the town’s zoning code does not allow construction within the 250-foot setback to watercourses — in this case, the Bozenkill — feeding the Watervliet Reservoir. 

  • Guilderland ZBA OKs new shopping center with abundant parking

    The 90 parking spots approved for 1671 Western Ave. are nearly triple the number of spaces the town’s zoning code allows but resolve what had become a persistent operational problem for the popular restaurant The Scene.

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